Not applicable.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to electronic calendaring methods and in particular to an agent for processing calendar information for use in a portable data processing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The prior art has disclosed a number and variety of interactive electronic calendaring systems and methods. The objective of all of these systems is primarily to assist the person who, for a number of different reasons, maintains a calendar of future events containing various information about the event at entry points on the calendar which relate to the time of the event.
The increase of personal computers and intelligent workstations in recent years has made it possible for calendar owners to establish and maintain their calendars on these interactive type data processing systems.
Two general types of interactive electronic calendaring systems have thus evolved in the art. In one type of calendaring system, the owner of the calendar is generally also the user of the workstation and that workstation is generally not a part of a larger network.
Generally, in these types of systems, the calendar functions involve presenting a screen to the user representing a day calendar divided into a number of time periods or time slots. Each period is capable of displaying a limited amount of text that the user enters. In some systems, the day calendar can scroll vertically to present more time periods to the user or horizontally to present longer text entries. The operator can generally xe2x80x9cpagexe2x80x9d forward or backward and, in most arrangements, can display a requested date. These calendaring arrangements generally do not limit the type of event that is calendared nor the terminology employed at any of the entry points and, to that extent, function in the same manner as conventional manual calendars or appointment books. The electronic calendaring method and systems do have an advantage over the prior art manual calendaring of events in that the user generally has the ability to scan a time span involving a large number of days and identify calendared events quite rapidly.
Among the most common entries in calendars are travel plans. Such entries typically identify an airline, flight number, destination and departure date and time. However, that information may change and hence time must be spent confirming the information. Even with modern electronic calendars that is a time-consuming task because the most recent information is kept at a remote location that must be periodically assessed via a network. Thus, if the calendar user wishes to find the status of the flight, he or she can connect to the Internet and type in the URL of the airline that is being flown, and enter the flight number being taken and the current status is shown.
If the calendar owner wishes to find other information about the final destination, such as the weather or suggested restaurants, this information can also be found by surfing the Internet at various sites that contain this type of information. In order to perform these searches, the calendar owner must be connected to the Internet and they must find the area where the information resides, dealing with the normal Internet delays. There are ways that this is accomplished for the world of xe2x80x9cconnected devicesxe2x80x9d that involve the connected device checking the source of the data on a periodic basis and alerting the user if certain parameters are met. This is accomplished using xe2x80x9cagentxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cmacros,xe2x80x9d and are dependent upon xe2x80x9cclientxe2x80x9d device to query the data sources that exist on the servers. For the case where the user is not at a connected client, however, the solutions are not easy to find. One solution that meets part of the need that we are aware of is the xe2x80x9cPager Gatewayxe2x80x9d product from Lotus. This product allows an IT administrator to configure mail to be sent to a pager when it has been forwarded to an internal mail location. This product only solves a small part of the problem identified abovexe2x80x94the actual sending of certain types of data (E-mail). Several shortcomings exist using this solution.
The Pager Gateway sends the e-mail after it has been delivered to an internal mailbox. The user must still specify what e-mail is to be sent using another method. The suggested method is for the user to set up a Lotus Notes agent to send the e-mail to the internal mailbox. The Pager Gateway works only on Notes E-mail. The user would like to have other types of data able to be delivered using this type of method. Thus, there is a need for a method of providing data services to handheld devices that overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art.
Briefly, according to the invention an intelligent agent resides in a server-based synchronization engine. The synchronization engine performs a method for a handheld device to retrieve data directly from a server without requiring a desktop or laptop data processing system. Thus, the handheld device is connected via a wireless or wireline modem to a service provider, where the synchronization of data occurs. The synchronization only occurs occasionally, therefore the server performs a method for forwarding xe2x80x9curgentxe2x80x9d data to the client device.